Climate Migration to Cities: Does the Move to Urban Areas Reduce Risk?

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CHAPTERS 

[00:02:04]: Why people move to cities: economic opportunity, education, and long-term prospects 

[00:04:42]: How climate change influences migration decisions, often indirectly 

[00:05:28]: Internal versus international migration: where most movement takes place 

[00:08:56]: Rapid urban growth in Asia and Africa and its demographic implications 

[00:11:09]: Climate and environmental risks facing migrants in urban areas 

[00:12:26]: Barriers to upward mobility for recent migrants in cities 

[00:17:45]: The role of cities in managing migration and adapting to climate-related pressures 

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:02.14] 

Hello, and welcome back to Changing Climate, Changing Migration. This is the podcast from the Migration Policy Institute that speaks with experts about the different ways that climate change interacts with migration. I'm your host, Julian Hattem, and I'm also the editor of MPI's online magazine and newsletter, the Migration Information Source. We publish accessible data and analysis about all issues related to migration. This podcast is part of our focus on climate change and migration, which includes a special collection of articles. You can find Those online at migrationpolicy.org/climate.

[00:00:43.20] 

When migrants travel to a new place, they tend to go to urban areas. More than half the world now lives in cities, and the share is increasing. Back in 1950, less than 1 third of the planet lived in urban areas. But by 2050, more than two thirds of the world's population is likely to be living in cities. Climate change is one reason for this dynamic. But people in cities are also exposed to climate risks, too. And as more people traveled and moved to cities, they demand more of its resources. There's more stress on transportation systems, public utilities like water and power, and public services like police or education. Put all these ingredients together and you get a very complex situation with a lot of moving parts. My guest today is Neil Adger. Neil is a professor of human geography at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. He has been researching human movement in reaction to climate change and as an adaptation strategy, including migration to cities, and I am thrilled to have him on here today. Neil, thank you. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

[00:01:52.13] 

Great to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

[00:01:55.06] 

So why do people migrate to cities, particularly amid climate change? I mean, what do cities offer that rural areas might not?

[00:02:03.20] 

Well, people move to cities because it's good for them, it's good for them, it's good for their families. It has been happening since time immemorial, since the evolution of cities. You know, that we are now 55, 60% an urban species, and most of the moves are between the cities, between the urban settlements, but also still people moving from rural areas to urban areas, if we just look at global trends. So migration is transformational for people, for their lives and livelihoods. And it's quite often this idea of an intergenerational bargain. It may be good, you know, particularly good to access educational opportunities and that sort of thing. So people are moving to cities and are continuing to do so. I guess your question is, is climate change amplifying or, you know, affecting those underlying flows?

[00:02:58.20] 

Yeah, exactly.

[00:02:59.11] 

And the answer is yes, to an extent. I mean, if we look around the world, you can see that calculus that people have implicitly or even explicitly is changing because of declining opportunities, declining investment. In some rural areas where climate change risks are apparent, people's perceptions of the future. And so people are moving to cities. And that may be at the margin, somewhat amplified by the trends that we see in climate change. Interestingly, of course, if you ask people, they may not articulate this directly. So we've been working with colleagues I across the world on this and we did a survey of at least one member of their household had moved to cities, working with researchers in India, in Bangladesh and in Ghana. And what people told us was that they moved cities because of economic opportunities and because of educational opportunities. Virtually no one told us or self perceived or self reported that they were an environmental migrant, that they'd move because of environmental change, at least in terms of the principal reason for moving. So climate change is affecting the landscape in which people are making those decisions and maybe speeding it up a little.

[00:04:16.11] 

But that doesn't mean to say that it's easy to go out and find some environmental migrants, because that isn't necessarily what people perceive.

[00:04:23.24] 

Sure. And I guess it might be the case, especially if you work in agriculture in a rural area or something, that climate change is making your work less profitable. There's less work to be had. But like maybe, and that's, that's affecting the calculus. So it's more of a... not as direct as we might think.

[00:04:40.15] 

Absolutely. So when we drilled down with this cohort of 5,000 or so households where they'd been involved in migration, many of them said they were worried about water security, you know, or food security. And it was these concerns and the prospects for the future. Really, it's this sort of discounting of the future that then prompted people to become involved in migration to migrate themselves and or their family members to migrate. And so they didn't perceive environment, but they just as being the principal driver. But they did perceive that things were changing, that prospects in places where people were moving from were becoming harder, prospects were more limited. And therefore this sort of amplified this change.

[00:05:27.13] 

And to be clear, we're talking primarily here about internal domestic migration within the country, Right. Not people moving from rural Ghana to urban France or whatever. It's mostly within the same, Correct?

[00:05:40.01] 

That's right, that's true. And again, just looking at the countries where we've been working with collaborators, that is mostly the case that the predominant forms of migration are internal. They are still in those countries, rural to urban. Those are countries with relatively High rural populations. But there are some direct international migration and there is certainly what we would call stepwise migration. People moving to urban areas to get some money, to accumulate some money and therefore move on, potentially even moving internationally. But in countries like Bangladesh and in India and across South Asia, I mean, one of the predominant international flows is for contract work in the Gulf in the construction industry and various others. And so people do save up money in rural areas and in order someone to go and work for a few years in construction in another part of the world, principally in the, in the Gulf States at the minute, and then. Yeah, but it's not permanent migration. It's never seen as such. It's sort of contract work for a few years.

[00:06:46.09] 

You talk about South Asia, Sub-Saharan, West Africa. Are these kind of the big hotspots, the big popular, both destinations and origins for migrants and migration impacted by climate change, especially to cities. I know in these regions some cities are just ballooning, right? Just getting huge. Are these the kind of the big areas?

[00:07:05.12] 

Let me say that these are areas where we have been doing research, but they're not necessarily the areas that are greatest flows. I mean, the single biggest flows of people globally is still from, you know, in the big and populous countries, it's from rural to urban India, it's from rural to urban China, rural to urban Indonesia, simply because these are the largest populations. But you're absolutely right that across Asia, across Africa, you know, urban areas are expanding very rapidly. The sorts of places. It's quite extraordinary, you know, in some senses, that sorts of cities that we've been working in, such as Chittagong, now known as Chattogram in Bangladesh, it's the second largest city. At independence of Bangladesh in 1971, it was probably one and a half million people. It's a big port city. It's now five and a half million. So there, within a generation, a generation and a half, it's grown from one and a half to five and a half million people, meaning that most people, the majority of people living in the city weren't born there. They've moved there at some point during their lives or at a maximum within the lives of their parents.

[00:08:16.17] 

This is not through natural population growth. The total fertility rates in that part of Bangladesh are replacement level. Therefore, this is all through people moving. And so this facing huge challenges for. And this is repeated across many Asian countries. Cities that have, you know, ballooned. Gone from the city of Dhaka, for example, the capital city now in Dhaka north and Dhaka south is... Went from 2 million independence to, I'm not sure of what it is in the last census, but you know, people talk about it being north of 16 million people, which is quite extraordinary really.

[00:08:56.08] 

And yeah, so let's talk about that. I mean that there are risks inherent there too, both. I mean, whereas cities double, triple, quadruple in size over a couple of decades, that's immense demand on the infrastructure. Right. Even regardless of climate change. But if you're in Dhaka, Chittagong, these are areas that are still heavily impacted by impacts of climate change. What are the vulnerabilities, the risks, the impacts of migrants who move to these. It's not the case that moving to the city solves all their problems.

[00:09:26.17] 

Right.

[00:09:26.21] 

What kind of risks do people face even after they move to urban areas?

[00:09:31.05] 

Absolutely. So that's a very important point that, you know, that we assume that most environmental migration or migration, where environment is a, you know, is an important factor in that movement, is moving people away from environmental hazards, moving from rural areas to urban areas. But as you point out, it's actually urban areas where you have become the crucible of where some of these risks actually come together. These risks associated with air pollution, these risks, environmental risks associated with air pollution, with water quality, with flooding and other sorts of risks in different parts of the world. But if we're talking about Bangladesh in particular, it's water quality, it is flood risk in these low lying areas. And of course, if quite a significant proportion of migrant flows into cities are to high density areas, you know, high density neighborhoods that may have be very reliant on the informal economy, then those risks are amplified and those risks are, you know, really risk to health associated with poor water quality, lack of access to services, health services and others, and the risk potentially of flooding and water inundation and all the health and other risks that actually go with that.

[00:11:07.19] 

So in a way people are moving out of one sort of hazard towards another sort of hazard. But I guess that's sort of part of the risk landscape that people are living in these days, I guess.

[00:11:21.14] 

What, is there a time component? I mean, is it the case, do these risks become any more or less extreme over time? I might imagine that, you know, the more settled someone is, the more kind of they, they move, they're kind of in a slum, they don't really have any money or resources. They spend a couple years, they get some jobs, they kind of build their way up. Is that the case or no? Is there these vulnerabilities and these risks persist for a long time?

[00:11:47.05] 

There is this idea seductive and actually completely idealized that of course, that moving to cities sort of establishes you on a route to a better life, to higher income. And it takes a few years to get established and to sort of then move out of high density, out of the informal economy, out of high density areas, and away from these risks. Unfortunately, what we do find, and in a study that we undertook with our colleagues at the University of Dhaka, but working in Chittagong, Chattogram, the second city, is that in effect, people get stuck in these areas. There is a lack of upward social mobility, that recent migrants suddenly become decade migrants, become a whole generation of migrants stuck in high density, what they would call some areas. And these places are no less insecure over time. And in fact, with growing population densities and with climate change, these places are becoming, in effect, more risky over time. So we have this idea, which of course is abroad in or widely spoken about in climate change and migration of trapped populations. But it's actually people trapped in places they are moving to just as much as being trapped and not being able to move in the first place.

[00:13:11.21] 

And I think this is actually one of the slightly counterintuitive, but actually one of the major findings, emerging findings in the climate change and migration area that risks are everywhere and the risks to migrant populations are just as pertinent as they are to non moving and non migrating or left behind populations.

[00:13:34.24] 

Is there a risk, I mean, we talked about risks of direct climate, flooding, kind of environmental hazards. Is there also a risk of either violent or kind of other interpersonal conflict when these new migrants arrive? I can imagine, especially if people are not climbing up the ladder in the way that we might idealize them to be climbing up the socioeconomic ladder. Are they competing for resources, for jobs? I mean, are there underlying tensions that can kind of be brought to the surface as everyone is kind of bumping up against each other and you know, they hoped that they would move to the city, they'd get a good job. That doesn't happen, I guess. Yeah. Are there kind of interpersonal, violent risks that could happen from that situation?

[00:14:13.16] 

There's certainly a, a significant discourse in policy and you know, in public discourse in virtually every country in the world that migration and, you know, large scale or rapid, you know, and clustered, you know, dense migration is a problem and it's a problem for social cohesion and it's a problem for the economy and the, you know, and the rest of it, you know, that is clearly apparent in virtually every country in the world, this sort of discourse that migration and particularly rapid migration brings you Know, social problems with it and economic problems and services. Yeah, access to services and the like. The evidence, you know, if we looked at this rationally, it's not quite there. It's, I mean, migrants and migration is being seen as a cause of conflict, of crime, of social division. But actually in many parts of the world, there's as much evidence that migrants are discriminated against. They're, you know, victims of discrimination in labor markets. They don't have access to resources, they don't have access to services. They're as much victims of crime as they are perpetrators of crime. So, you know, the evidence isn't quite there. Despite that persistent public and policy discourse around them, there is this discourse around competition for employment.

[00:15:37.15] 

But again, migration, if they brings economic growth, in effect, in many instances, the impact of low skilled migration on labor markets is very contested. It tends not to drive down wages, but it tends to increase aggregate demand and therefore brings economic growth. If you think of an economy and the way that we measure economic activity is just a sum of all the economic activity that goes through markets that people are involved in. The more people you have, the more economic activity there's going to be. So therefore clearly growing the economy through growing population brings economic growth. I mean, it's interesting that even in rural areas, in places like, you know, Kenya, Sudan, where there are refugee camps, you know, the macroeconomic benefits of having refugee camps is quite significant. You know, that these are where they would, you know, you would think that you would imagine that they would be perceived negatively. But much of the sort of macroeconomic evidence is even the presence of just lots of people brings about more economic activity, more demand for goods and services. So again, it's a sort of counterintuitive from social science and economics that people moving around, moving towards resources brings all these problems.

[00:17:05.18] 

But it brings just as many opportunities as far as I can see.

[00:17:10.12] 

I guess if you are a city, how do you take advantage of those opportunities and minimize the risks? Which I guess is to say, if you're the mayor of Dhaka or any other big city that's being impacted by climate change and has like a large migrant population, what can cities do? What kind of policies can help take advantage of that potential benefit while avoiding some of the negative repercussions of a large number of people living in kind of a permanent underclass.

[00:17:38.18] 

That is a very good question and one I'm glad to say that there has been quite a lot of movement on. And you know, city mayors around the world are beginning to see this as an opportunity and as you mentioned, actually the mayor of Dhaka north, which is, you know, the way that Dhaka is constituted, the mayor of Dhaka north is part of a progressive alliance called the Mayors Migration Council globally that are thinking of, thinking about this. I mean, you ask for specific policies or mechanisms. I guess the, you know, one thing that cities are at the forefront of doing is encouraging low carbon, high growth futures. So actually, you know, trying to act on climate change to ensure that, that we're not perpetuating or amplifying, you know, the risks of climate change that may lead to involuntary displacement somewhere else at some point in the future. So I think that's hugely positive. But also I think just specifically about mobility, such cities are seeking to, at least at the margins, where they have some autonomy in this, ensuring policies that make mobility actually easier, return migration easier and allows people to come into cities, you know, bills, you know, part of their life there, perhaps return, you know, be involved in family reunification as well.

[00:19:03.18] 

And I think that's not only at the city scale, but internationally there's, you know, evidence for this that actually making mobility and facilitating mobility and making the movement of people easier doesn't simply just increase the number of people who are on the move, but it actually means people can plan better for the future. They can engage in return migration to places where they were. They can, you know, move at different parts of their life and life course. And then of course, cities are, you know, particularly multicultural cities or you know, cities with, you know, significant populations from different parts of the country, their countries or different parts of the world, they can become, become sort of cities of sanctuary almost by, well, by building on the links, building on existing global links of their own populations to make sure that, you know, to facilitate people coming in, welcoming diasporas involved in these sorts of things. So I mean, I think there is certainly opportunities for cities to be at the forefront here. Where we think of really it's national governments and national countries that enforce borders and are the only principal actors in the issue of migration.

[00:20:20.15] 

Where in fact cities, city regions, the links between rural and urban areas and hinterlands, the provision of services and the provision of food and all the rest of it. I think we need to think more broadly about what migration is and the potential role of, as you say, of, of actors other than national governments in this area.

[00:20:48.05] 

That's about all we have time for today. We're probably going to have to wrap it up there. But Neil, thank you so much for coming on. This was really interesting. I appreciate your time.

[00:20:56.13] 

It's been a pleasure and I do love this series you have. Thank you.

[00:21:00.07] 

Thank you very much. Neil Adger is a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter. Thank you for listening to this episode of Changing Climate, Changing Migration. Make sure to catch all the new episodes by subscribing to the podcast wherever you get your audio content, and please leave us a review. You can find all of our episodes online in our archives at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts and while you're on the site, you should also check out MPI's other podcasts and sign up for the Migration Information Source newsletter. It comes out twice a month and offers an unparalleled perspective on current migration trends. Follow MPI on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram to see what we're up to. And you can also get in touch with me by sending me an email at [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you. Yoseph Hamid produced this episode with assistance from Lisa Dixon and oversight by Michelle Mittelstadt. The theme music you are hearing is called Touch by Patrick Patrikios. My name is Julian Hattem. Thanks again for listening.